Why choose AVD? In this episode, Consultant Robert Buktenica and Solutions Architect John Gallacher take a further look into Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), including some of the key benefits that AVD has been able to offer its users.
TIMESTAMP
00:07 Introduction
00:30 The Brew
01:08 Overview of what AVD is capable of delivering.
01:44 The most important thing you need to know what AVD can deliver.
02:53 What advantage can an organization achieve when adopting AVD?
03:58 How an organization can benefits of from using AVD?
06:18 Conclusion
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Robert Buktenica: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Late Night Brew, we talk the brews first and then we get around to the business stuff later. I’m Robert Buktenica, also known as Buk. Tonight with me again in the second episode is John Gallacher to give more of a deep dive in AVD. John, welcome back.
John Gallacher: Hey, mate. How are you doing?
The Brew
Robert: Doing good. Top question of the night. What are you having?
John: Tonight mate I’ve wrapped up a little bit. I’ve got a bit trendier for you. I’ve got a Disco Forklift Truck, which is a mango pale ale, if you can see that. It’s also brewed at a local place in Glasgow. I’m actually quite enjoying it.
Robert: Brilliant. On the fruit beer, I’m actually enjoying a, they call it Joy Bus WOW. It’s hard with the light. It’s orange wheat beer, and the best part, proceeds go to a charity, so drinking for a cause.
John: Oh, good. That’s it. Superb.
Overview of what AVD is capable of delivering.
Robert: The quick elevator pitch overview. What’s AVD, Azure Virtual Desktop, capable of delivering?
John: I would say in a nutshell, would be the fact that AVD is a secure and centralized platform that’s developed via Azure. It’s used for delivering applications and desktops to any user in any device, in any location. Lots of power there. Very similar to historically centric solutions and things like Horizon RDS. This is basically the Microsoft offering of that capability.
The most important thing you need to know what AVD can deliver.
Robert: Awesome. Now, what would you say is one of the most important things people should know about what AVD can do?
John: I think one of the real blockers or one of the things that had to be really thought about in previous EUC-type deployments was the infrastructure and all that stuff. I think with AVD, it’s not that you’ve not got to think about it, that’s still very important when it comes to planning and design, but because it’s a platform service, it’s super scalable, it’s very reliable, and there’s a low total cost of ownership. A sort of a nice one is the fact that many customers out there that are part of the Microsoft ecosystem have got licensing for it right now. With regard to the cost there, it’s just really the compute and some storage, with regard to the actual service, there’s a good chance customers are actually good to go.
Robert: That’s always good to know, that parts of your license that you’re not taking advantage of, you should get what you’re paying for.
John: Exactly.
What advantage can an organization achieve when adopting AVD?
Robert: On getting what you pay for, what’s some advantages or capabilities that an organization can get from adopting AVD?
John: I think the overall management is improved if you’re looking at AVD versus a traditional desktop solution. Improve management, as you receive access from anywhere you can really tune that performance to whatever the workload of the user profile requires, and you’ve also got a lot of security. Again, like everything else in modern times, you don’t expect security to be taken for granted out the box. You’ve really got to plan a security strategy as well, but there is lots of security options to really make sure you’ve got a hardened deployment that’s going to be secure for your business and ultimately your end-users.
Robert: Yes. At least in the time of recording in the last six months, it’s been an interesting time for security, so that’s always a good one to hear.
John: That’s key, right? Super key.
How an organization can benefits of from using AVD?
Robert: Exactly. On that, security is actually a great segue to the benefits of using it. Security is obviously one we’ve already touched on. What’s some more?
John: Yes, I think one of the ones that gets the most interest in the most value and return on investment is the fact that lots of the things traditionally you’ve got to manage yourself is completely abstracted. Looking at the overhead of teams having to manage brokers and delivery controllers, and all these things that carry their own potential security vulnerabilities as well, is really taken off your plate and it gives you more time to focus on what’s important and that’s the users, the applications, and performance, of course.
Robert: Maintenance is important, but no one likes performing the maintenance.
John: Exactly.
Robert: Up and coming. What’s something on the roadmap that we can look forward to?
John: Yes, I think up and coming, feature-wise, there’s been quite a lot of buzz around MSIX app attach. It’s a great feature, and what we’ve seen over the last while with the acquisition of FSLogix, decoupling the OS of the profile. MSIX app attach just takes that one stage further where you can decouple the profile operating system as well as the applications. That’s really cool and allows for a lot more flexibility in how you manage your applications and performance as well.
I think the one thing you call out which has been pretty difficult historically in the land of EUC’s, is getting your applications out in the correct format. Albeit a great feature and getting your applications, whether it’s something that’s legacy, or it’s MSI, or a set up directly, is really getting that into the modern format so it’s prepared and ready to go. That’s been quite a challenge for quite a lot of organizations. We have got awesome partnership with the mighty MO3 and really that really takes care of that whole problem no matter the scale, that is used to basically convert the applications.
One of the key things, is, if it can’t convert it, there’s still value in that to find out exactly why it can’t be converted and let the team focus on the next thing. It’s a really a powerful technology, and I’m hoping our marketing team can get a little link dropped for a beautiful session that yourself and Peter can have on MO3.
Conclusion
Robert: Exactly. I’m sure they will, so click on the link if you want to learn more about that. Pete and I discuss it. On that, we are wrapped up on time. The new short format, a little more succinct. Hopefully, it’s working for everyone. We will be touching on the next episode of the series, Citrix, we touched on that a little bit here, expanding on what Citrix can do. Stay tuned. I hope everyone enjoyed and until next time, mate. Cheers.
